Paul Cantor: The Crisis in Higher Education—and Opportunities for Learning Online

Conversations with Bill Kristol

News, Society & Culture, Government, Politics

4.7 • 1.7K Ratings

🗓️ 20 August 2020

⏱️ 70 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

How should we grade American universities on their performance in educating young people? What role do universities play in American life today? How might we think about the opportunities for education beyond the traditional on-campus model? In this Conversation, the University of Virginia’s Paul Cantor argues that universities often are failing in their most critical mission. There are, Cantor argues, a whole host of ideological, economic, and political factors that contribute to this decline, but he highlights a neglected one: bureaucratic centralization. According to Cantor, the efforts of universities to place administrators in charge of key decisions has weakened university departments—and taken authority from faculty members, who often have been a check on efforts to undermine liberal education. In light of the decline of elite institutions, particularly in the domain of liberal arts, Cantor and Kristol also consider how online technologies and non-university educational programs can further the goal of genuine liberal education, outside the institutional world of higher ed. One such encouraging example is Cantor’s own Shakespeare and Politics website in the FCG’s Great Thinkers series.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	And the Hi, I'm Bill Crystal. Welcome back to Conversations. I'm very pleased to be joined today by a frequent guest, Paul Cantor, a professor of English at the University of Virginia.
0:24.6	We've discussed Shakespeare.
0:25.7	We've discussed popular culture, 19th century British novels, 20th century American television so yet another topic today that I thought would be very
0:36.0	interesting given Paul that you've taught for almost five decades it's hard to believe
0:40.5	in higher at fine institutions of higher education at Harvard where we first met and then at UVA since what 1977?
0:48.0	Wow.
0:50.0	And so let's talk about higher education, how is it doing in terms of educating people,
0:55.2	how's it doing as a kind of institution in American society and the American economy.
1:01.0	Are there, is it going to remain as dominant as it seems to be today and in our
1:05.7	overall educational and I guess literary and intellectual life lots of interesting things to talk about.
1:13.3	So, okay, you've been teaching students for 50 years almost and had colleagues for all that time
1:20.1	at Harvard and UVA.
1:21.1	What should I think about higher education, is looking at it from the outside?
1:24.8	Should I be, is it as bad as I sometimes think it might be or should I be a little cheered up
1:29.2	because there's better things than I realize or what's your general take and how has it changed over that all
1:34.4	those all that time? Well I I always try to be optimistic and I hope you will be
1:42.1	cheered up in this sense that the students are still wonderful
1:47.0	and it's a great thrill to teach them
1:50.0	and the problems I think are largely institutional.
1:57.0	That's what I'd like to talk about. I think higher education is in bad shape and unfortunately the problems are becoming
2:06.2	increasingly visible.
2:08.2	For years people have been warning against the state of higher education. We were both friends of Alan Bloom back at the late 1980s.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Conversations with Bill Kristol, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Conversations with Bill Kristol and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.